STATEN ISLANDDISTRICT 31

IS 75PAULO INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLHUGUENOT, STATEN ISLAND

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Mr. Perrone’s Spanish class will never be the same. Students tracethe movement of a caravan along a trade route from India throughthe Middle East to Spain. Dancers from Young Audiences/New York,one of the school’s arts partners, swirl to the staccato beat of fla-

menco music as youngsters enthusiasticallyidentify the elements of Middle Eastern andIndian music and dance in the performancethey present. Students explore the vocabu-lary of these regions to identify commonroot words and, yes, they still learn Spanishvocabulary, conjugate verbs, and translatepassages.

“I teach differently now,” states foreignlanguages teacher Sal Perrone. “I want mystudents to understand that language andculture are intertwined, always changing andevolving. The arts make this real for my stu-dents.” The arts not only provide a context forlearning about another language and culture, they also help ensure the IS 75students, a homogeneous group of close to 1,600 sixth through eighthgraders on Staten Island, understand and appreciate the impact of diversecultures on their lives.

IS 75 has always had a commitment to the arts, offering students arange of visual and performing arts classes in well-equipped classrooms andstudios. But these facilities were all housed in a separate arts wing, physi-cally removed from the academic classrooms, and the content of the arts

and academic classes was not well integrated.“It wasn’t real,” explains Principal Julie ElSaieh-Wolfe. “Life isn’t about dividing thingsup into disparate parts, so why should we dothis to students? Our dream was to end thesegregation of the arts and bring them intoeverything we do.”

Funding from the Center for ArtsEducation is helping the school realize thisdream. But first the school had to build the

foundation to support this transformation.The school started by organizing the cur-

riculum for each grade around a specifictheme. Sixth graders explore world cultures

through the theme “A Multicultural Masterpiece,” while seventh gradersexamine their personal backgrounds in relation to their families and the localcommunity through “The Multidimensional Me.” Eighth graders explore largerissues of systems and the impact of environment through their thematicproject “Myriad Movements in the Environment.”

ARTS PARTNERS: Metropolitan Opera Guild • Staten Island Children’s MuseumStaten Island Symphony • Young Audiences/New York

Next, the school made a clear statement about ending the segregationof the arts by interspersing arts rooms throughout the school. With the helpof its partners, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, Young Audiences/New York, theStaten Island Children’s Museum, and the Staten Island Symphony, IS 75 isusing the arts to support academic learning by infusing themthroughout the academic areas.

“We are taking the arts that were onceseparate and making them part of what we doevery day,” explains communication artsteacher Sharon Saronson. “Now we aredancing in our foreign language classes,writing librettos in communication arts, andcreating original music as part of poetrystudies. And the arts teachers arereshaping what they do to reflect the cur-riculum studies.” A recent study of insectsat the Staten Island Children’s Museum, forexample, included an art activity in whichthe children applied their understanding of camouflage by painting cardboardinsects. And, in a social studies unit on medieval history, students not onlylearned about illuminated manuscripts, they actually created them as well.

But ensuring that all faculty have the professional development andsupport they need to implement a complex integrated program across grade-level themes requires both careful planning and coordination. At IS 75, this ishandled through a committee of teachers and administrators.

The committee includes four teachers who are liaisons to the arts part-ners, one teacher for each partner. In collaboration with the principal and

assistant principal, each liaison is responsible for coordinating the profes-sional development and direct-service activities of one partner with theactivities of the other three. A case in point is the work of the liaison for theopera, who organized the efforts of all the arts partners in developing andperforming a student-created opera.

The foundation for creating an originalstudent opera was laid during the summer,

when an interdisciplinary team of IS 75 facultyparticipated in a weeklong summer institute atPrinceton University with artists from theMetropolitan Opera Guild. During this time, theteachers implemented every phase of pro-ducing an original opera, from developing theconcept and writing the libretto to actually per-forming the opera, an experience described asboth “painful and rewarding,” by AssistantPrincipal Nikki Villani.

Back at the school in the fall, the facultyteam turned to their arts partners for professional development and supportin staging a student-developed opera. The liaisons coordinated the efforts ofartists from the Metropolitan Opera Guild, Young Audiences/New York, andthe Staten Island Symphony to develop the skills of teachers in helping theirstudents create a script, compose music, design the stage sets, choreographthe dance movements, and perform the original opera. The liaisons were alsoresponsible for managing the artists’ schedule of instruction.

Coordinating the efforts of faculty and artists to this degree requiresthat the planning committee meet “all the time,” according to planning com-

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mittee member Harriet Goldman: “Before school, at lunch, during scheduled planning periods, after school,on weekends, and when we happen to bump into each other at the shopping center!”

But their work does not end with coordinating the programs of the arts partners. The committeemembers are also ensuring that the arts program will be sustained beyond the funding period by trans-forming existing arts teachers into in-house arts “resources” for the subject-area teachers. Professionaldevelopment opportunities offer the arts teachers theskills they need to enhance their capacity as artsteachers and hone their ability to mentor andcoach their colleagues. Artists from the StatenIsland Symphony, for example, offer masterclasses to IS 75 music faculty, while a printmakerfrom Young Audiences/New York helps the artteachers understand the nuances of printmaking.Through professional development, arts facultyare making the transition from “just” serving asteachers to becoming teachers and resources foracademic programs.

Professional development is not limited to the development of arts resources and a student-created opera. More than one-third of the school’s 75-member faculty were involved with the arts programin its first year. They participated in a range of summer and after-school workshops with their arts partnersand helped plan the strategies and professional development that underscore successful implementation ofthe in-classroom activities. The goal, however, is to involve all faculty, so time is provided during facultyconferences, grade meetings, and curriculum meetings for the artists to present projects they are working onto the entire staff.

“The arts are making us do things in different ways,” says communication arts teacher LindaQuintavalle. “I have had to take a deep breath and just let go. Now the artists and teachers share theirexpertise, inspire each other, and together, create something special.”

1. Organize the arts experiences throughspecific curricular themes.

2. Use opera as a multidisciplinaryperformance under which the other arts—music, drama, visual arts, writing—can be organized and integrated.

3. Appoint teachers as liaisons to the artspartner and make each liaison responsiblefor coordinating the activities andschedule of his or her arts partner.

4. Develop school-based arts resources bybuilding the professional skills of artsteachers as artists and as mentors forsubject-area teachers.

5. Introduce faculty not currentlyinvolved with the arts program to theeffort by scheduling presentations by theartists for all teachers—during facultyconferences, grade meetings, andcurriculum meetings.

6. Send teachers as interdisciplinary teamsto a summer institute or intensiveafter-school classes.

IS 75’S PROMISING PRACTICES